Split Weakens U.S.-Backed Syrian Rebels as Islamists Gain
U.S. and Russian efforts to set the stage for Syrian peace talks suffered a blow as the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition was repudiated by more than a dozen rebel factions.
The break by the rebel groups shows the growing power of militant Islamic fighters and hampers the U.S. effort to position moderate Syrian opposition leaders to lead a transition from the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. It also muddies the effort to arm and train moderate rebel groups while keeping advanced weapons out of the hands of extremists.
It’s now uncertain what role the opposition coalition will be able to play in peace talks that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov seek to convene in Geneva as early next month.
The militants’ rejection of the main U.S.-backed opposition coalition “weakens it significantly,” Daniel Serwer, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, said yesterday.
As many as 13 rebel groups issued a statement saying the Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition “does not represent us” and that they plan to unite under Islam’s sharia law, according to a video on Google Inc.’s YouTube showing a leader of one brigade, Abdulaziz Salameh, reading the document aloud.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-26/split-weakens-u-s-backed-syrian-rebels-as-islamists-grow.html